


Glue

by Aralakh



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-10
Updated: 2013-10-10
Packaged: 2017-12-28 23:33:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/998231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aralakh/pseuds/Aralakh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shepard finds it difficult get out of her funk after Thessia. Desperate times call for desperate measures and she seeks an ear in Garrus.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Glue

**Author's Note:**

> There's no original dialogue in this fic, just a lot of Shepard head exploration.

Falling apart is easy. It's probably one of the easiest things in the world. It's pulling yourself back together that's the hard part. It takes an incredible amount of time compared to falling apart, which may only take as much as the blink of an eye, the press of a button; the fist smacking the wall, the knees hitting the floor. Some people never get up from that floor. Some people do though, and when they do? Not only do they have to pull themselves together but they have to make sure they've got the glue to make sure they stay that way. 

On board the Normandy SR-2, it's very hard to find that kind of time. Commander Shepard can verify that. Before she can begin to think about clearing up some space in her hectic schedule for even a fraction of that necessary time she's already touching down on X planet and making another split second analysis of the battlefield before beckoning her team with a point of her fingers. As soon as she catches sight of them leaving her side and moving to their positions, she's thinking of nothing but the battle and how to get it won.

She has a box. It's pretty big and it resides at the back of her mind. She puts all of her grief, remorse, regret, and guilt into it so she can come back later and sort through it. She's a very busy woman, after all. With the fate of the entire galaxy on her shoulders, needless to say she hasn't quite had much of a 'later' to speak of and so the box has been getting dangerously close to bursting recently.

Fast forward to Thessia as she watches the beginning of the downfall of this beautiful planet from the ruined temple. The box can no longer take any more. _She_ can't take any more. She can't physically stand and watch the descent of dozens of Reapers because as she does, she feels the box give way under the strain of its contents. 

Her eyes narrow as she turns away from the sight and away from the outstretched hand of her companion. 

She's going to be sick.

\---

"Shepard..." Liara started, head down and voice low. "I... Nobody could've predicted Cerberus would reach Thessia before us." There was a pause from the Commander. She took a moment to wonder how Liara was even managing to speak right now, let alone attempting to comfort her on some level. Liara, who had just watched her home planet go up in smoke. 

"It's my job to be prepared. No matter what," she replied curtly. Perhaps a bit too curtly. Her business face was back on but slipping fast. There were no excuses for this failure and she wouldn't accept assurances to the contrary. "Now Thessia is lost. As is the data on the catalyst." Her job was to be prepared and it wasn't exactly hard to imagine the possibility of Cerberus being there considering they'd managed to somehow worm their way into most of the Normandy's missions so far. It was actually very feasible that they make an appearance. There would be no excuses.

"I'm sick of Cerberus beating us to the punch!" she admitted angrily. There goes her business face. Just for a moment, but long enough. Being forced to stare into that holographic projection of Thessia being decimated was only serving to aggravate her more. Openly stating how she felt to her crew, even to this small extent, was rare. Hell to it, she was fucking angry.

"Let's kick them in the balls first for a change."

"I'm with James," Shepard immediately responded. She switched off the projection with a forceful push of the button. "Anyone know where they're hiding?" The silence was awkward. If anybody knew where Cerberus was hiding, would they even be in this position right now? She forced herself to look around at her squad, at their faces. She was pretty damned sure they were all avoiding her gaze. "Anyone?" she repeated, voice weaker. She briefly wondered if anybody had heard the slight desperation in her tone.

Apparently Traynor had. 

"I want that Prothean data. I want the catalyst. No excuses. Dismissed."

\---

Shepard felt near to no better after Anderson's pep talk in the comms room. In fact, she felt a shade angrier at herself than she had on Thessia which at the time, she hadn't even thought possible. The man leading the Earth resistance shouldn't have to waste his precious time reassuring a Commander of her stature. 

A long, shaky sigh could be heard before she straightened her face and levelled her voice for returning to the war room. There was no way Commander Shepard was going to appear weak in front of her squad or crew, not if she could help it. It had been prevented for a good few years now since she'd had control of the Normandy and her hard work wasn't going to come crashing down now. SR-1, SR-2; it didn't matter. The last thing her crew needed on a ship like this, on a _mission_ like this, was to see cracks in their captain. It fuelled doubts which she couldn't afford right now.

The Normandy runs on fuel and hope and it always has. Sounds tacky and clichéd but Shepard can't deny the truth. It wasn't their diplomacy skills or their guns that had gotten them this far. It was hope. That hope and optimism was the only way they stood a fighting chance of winning this. It got them through the many deaths of their crewmates, their worries about the lack of council support, through the hunt for Saren, being away from their families on human colonies during the collector abductions. It got them through the suicide mission and through having to watch countless planets burn, the existence of dozens of races fizzle out. Her crew deserved better than this, a fact that was painfully reiterated when she crossed the threshold of the war room into the CIC and caught the dismayed tones of Privates Campbell and Westmoreland as she did so.

Maybe she was being hard on herself; maybe they hadn't lost faith in their captain. It sure felt like it though. It felt like a punch in the gut to walk around your own ship and hear whispers of 'what if' but it felt even worse to hear absolutely nothing. The silence was intrusive. It left room for the loud voices in her head. The voices of the dead. Ashley, Thane, Mordin, everybody she hadn't been able to save. 

After saving the galaxy - not once, but twice - with a team of the most talented and gifted people in space, it was near impossible to accept the prospect of failure. Now, at this most crucial point, and to lose it all to that slithery bastard Kai Leng and his sugar daddy evil overlord The Illusive Man... It rocked Shepard hard.

\---

Joker had never spoken to her like that before. He also hadn't expressed his guilt before either so at least that was one good thing to come of their clash. Hopefully him getting it off his chest could let him finally begin to - slowly but surely - fight against the weight he'd been carrying on his shoulders since the crash. She had not for one second thought of blaming him. It was simply not a possibility that had ever crossed her mind since she woke up to Miranda's orders on that lab table in the Cerberus base.

Perhaps the scientific proof backing him up, courtesy of EDI, was another factor he felt he needed in order to confront Shepard. It was hard to laugh and brush something off when the hard facts were right there in your face. They may as well have been tangible. There was no dismissing them with a wave of the hand. She tried but her words were hollow and half-hearted and he knew it. Her pilot was one of those always cracking jokes and avoiding the serious talky feely stuff at all costs, like the very mention of not being okay would result in spontaneous combustion. Unfortunately for him, he was also very observant and not lacking in empathy. Out of everyone on the ship, those two had probably known each other the longest and she appreciated his presence here probably more than he knew, and more than she was capable of expressing. 

Between getting a stern telling off from Joker and trying to hold Liara together, Shepard was in a _shit_ mood to say the least. The more people who were nice to her, that were worried about her, the more angry she grew. She felt helpless and totally undeserving of anybody's reassurances right now. It was a vicious circle that she'd been having trouble breaking out of for a few hours now. Pathetic. She needed to get herself out of this funk and soon.

She thought briefly about getting some reports done and looking over files. There were always reports to be done or checks to go through on the ship. The devil makes work for idle hands has never been truer. With a shake of her head, she thought the better of it. It was amazingly easy to embrace the monotony of endless reading and repetitive button pressing when there were more important things to worry about. Falling into a paperwork stupor wasn't the best idea right now while she actually had some time to spare (shock) before assaulting what she hoped dearly was the Illusive Man's base.

She didn't want to avoid addressing the broken box any more than she already had. Its contents had been spilled and floated around her head like it was a zero gravity environment in there. There would be no more wallowing in self pity and no more of her crew worrying about her. Ash's death, being shot down by Kaidan on Horizon, the passing of Thane and Mordin; she never sought solace in her team. Everything went in the box. The reality of it was that the box simply couldn't take any more. 

"Desperate times call for desperate measures."

\---

It was the best news she'd heard all day and boy did she need it. Due to the sheer volume of bad news in this seemingly one-sided war, any good news was automatically rendered excellent news and cause for a few smiles in the midst of the chaos. The fact that it was good news pertaining to Garrus's family only served to elevate it further into absolutely brilliant have a clap on the back news. She was genuinely happy for him, even more so when he told her of the advice he'd given the Primarch. Luck was a commodity.

She understood what he was going through. Making tough calls and big decisions were part of her job and they never got easier to make so she didn't bother telling him so. She'd had nightmares about the pitiful inhabitants of the Bahak system and she'd never even met any of them. They were statistics and numbers and yet their deaths affected her both in reality and while she slept. There was no doubt Garrus had made the right decision but that was something he had to find out for himself. Ruthless calculus.

"How are you holding up Shepard? This all has to be taking a toll."

There it was. The question. The question she'd been asked many times by many different people in many different ways. Her answer was always the same.

"There's only so much fight in a person," she began quietly. Until now. Her bright green eyes gazed up at Garrus. His face was scarred, he'd been through a lot, but he was still here. With her. Since the beginning. Her eyes rested on the tactical display they had both been watching. Giving him an honest answer was all well and good and very much necessary at this point, she felt, but it didn't mean she had to be comfortable with showing him her weaker side. "Only so much death you can take before..." 

She trailed off. The words that came after scared the living daylights out of her. Could she actually say it? Could she say those words? She wasn't even sure she had said them to herself. Not even in her own head. They weighed heavy on her heart and once they were uttered, there was no going back. Luckily, she didn't have to.

"Before a certain turian with no romantic skills to speak of," he closed the distance between them, "tries to cheer you up."

It may not have looked that way from the outside, but on the inside Shepard's head was fried. A million different things zoomed around and feelings came and went and came back again. Her mind couldn't seem to decide on what she was feeling in that moment. It travelled between telling her she was relieved he'd interrupted her, or telling her that she was shit scared that he knew exactly what he was doing when he interrupted her because he knew - or at the very least had an inkling - what her train of thought was and what implications it would have if voiced aloud. If he _did_ know, then was she frightened or was she actually thankful? Good grief no wonder she stored all this in a bloody box all the time. Of course this internal meltdown had happened all within the space of a second because she defaulted to banter almost immediately.

"Cheer? Coming from you?"

"Mood swings," he offered, his arm snaking around her waist, "Don't worry. We'll get through this. We always do."

It was true. She couldn't see it before but it was absolutely positively true. They had gotten through the almost thankless job of pursuing Saren and thwarting Sovereign's plans, as well as coming back alive from the aptly named suicide mission. What made this time any different? He had done what Kaidan hadn't been able to: just tell her it would be okay. She felt warm and it wasn't just because she was leaning on Garrus. 

Joined at the waist, they savoured the moment. Peace. It was fleeting and they both needed to prepare for the assault on Cerberus. Garrus carried on hitting her with more reasons that they would win; that The Illusive Man wouldn't get the better of them again. As she left him alone and rode in the elevator back to her cabin, she wondered what she do without him. That was when she realised that she was in love with Garrus Vakarian. He was the glue that kept her together.


End file.
